Two days ago I wrote about a tool from Leo Burnett Lisbon. Today a talented mind at Poke in NYC called me on my shit.

No I had not actually installed it. It was a great branding exercise but when Poke talks about creating simple clear single ideas – they comes from a place of consumer understanding. There is a reason Tom is asking.

We are inherently distrustful of installing or committing to things on the Internet. Make it load fast, make it zero commitment, and make it worth my time.

In short here is my quick review of Leo Burnett’s Opportunity App:

That is the previous post I had written on the app as seen through the eyes of Leo Burnett. It’s charming, it makes the point.

And here is the Wikipedia page for Crisis:

There you go you’ve seen it. So I’ll save you the downside to this whole process.

I’m a passive participant in it. That was it nothing more I can do with it. Now I have to uninstall it. This all could have been achieved much more simply with in browser technology.

Head over to Made with Computers and check out the post on Markkit. The click to test feature is fantastic. Leo could have taken this as an opportunity to make their homepage the portal to opportunity on the web.

Viewing the web through a Leo portial site would have really driven the point home. Instead my browsing experence is slower and I have to remember where the uninstall feature is on Firefox.

Leo Burnett Lisbon created a plug-in (a device for the internet) that removes the word “crisis” from every webpage and replaces it by the word “opportunity”. This revolutionary digital tool is extremely easy to install, and allows people to replace the most repeated word of the year for the word “opportunity”.
“We want to stop seeing the problem and start seeing the solution.” These words were the foundation of this original idea, available at www.see-the-opportunity.com. Here you can download the free plug-in, available in three languages: Portuguese, English and Spanish.

How ball’n is that?

If any of you web programers out there want to tell me how hard an app this would be to create I would love to know.

Schick’s never ending quest to make us all hairless has taken another step forward this week – so what are the odds a prominent feminist blog disapproves:

This commercial actually brings up the issue of nature and control. I think women should be able to do whatever the hell they please with the hair down there, but I’m also a pretty big fan of letting it just be. Too many of us spend an exorbitant amount of time on “maintenance” when it comes to our bodies, often motivated–not by a sense of playfulness or joy–but obligation, shame, societal pressure. If you find it fun to trim around or wax it off, more power to you, but I wish women didn’t feel like they had to do anything in particular with their own pubic hair in order to be pretty, clean, or acceptable.

Personally I see no harm here. Schick and JWT are late to the body grooming party, first of all, and this same style of spot was comic gold when Philips did it for men.

Could the difference be in the direct comedic read?

Does any ad dealing with our nether regions require comedy to brake through the uncomfortable feelings some people have about their genitals?

Personally the only issue I can see is that most spots that cover these kinds of issues tend to use more dialogue to humanize the actors. This spot was the most complained about spot of the year in Australia:

Again no dialogue and a classic metaphor, the same combo that has got everyone commenting and posting on Schick’s newest ad.

Yet this campaign from Leo Burnett Worldwide for Tampax was received as a breath of fresh air – it’s comedic, full of dialogue and yet still riddled with classic metaphor.

In fact this campaign was so well received that LB and P&G took this campaign to the streets:

So it’s gotta be the writing that sets beef apart from non-beef, or it’s that self actualizing bullshit tone that has been foisted on women for years.

Watch the Schick spot again.

That tone is more unnecessary than an 8th blade and CGI sports heroes.